Wages, Job Queues, and Skills

We study the relationship between wages and the number and quality of applicants that a vacancy attracts. Using data from a large US employment website, we show that higher wages attract better applicants. Surprisingly, higher wages are associated with fewer applications, and this is robust to controlling for industry and occupation fixed effects. Only within specific job titles are higher wages associated with more applications. Our theoretical model shows that such a pattern is consistent with skills demanded by firms being highly job specific. The model has additional testable implications about rent sharing and unemployment rates by skill.